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The Community Connection Center represents a vital part of UA Little Rock's mission - building high-impact programs and partnerships that inspire students to become active citizens, change agents and leaders in our community.

The Abolitionists Film and Community Discussion

Join us for the showing of the film, The Abolitionists followed by a community discussion about the movement to end slavery in the United States.

The discussion will be led by Dr. Carl Moneyhon, UALR professor of history, a specialist in the history of the American Civil War and the South. He has been widely published in the field with works that have been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities. RSVP NOW.

Historical Background

On January 1, 1831, William Lloyd Garrison heralded the emergence of militant abolitionism in the United States with an editorial in his new newspaper the Liberator. In it Garrison demanded an immediate end to slavery, refusing to be moderate on the question.

In subsequent years Garrison and associates such as the former slave Frederick Douglass, woman’s rights activist Angela Grimké, novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe, and minister Theodore Dwight Weld worked together in organizations such as the American Anti-Slavery Society and actively campaigned through newspapers, pamphlets, and petitions to Congress for an end to slavery and the securing of equal rights for blacks.

The militant abolitionists built upon a tradition of anti-slavery thought in America that drew upon a wide variety ideas, including religious beliefs concerning the equality of all men before God and political concepts of the rights of man that had emerged in the American Revolution. They faced widespread opposition that at times resorted to violence to thwart their efforts.

Nonetheless, this combination of black and white, male and female activists ultimately moved forward in securing at least part of their goals through the ending of slavery in many northern states, the banning of the international slave trade, personal liberty laws, and ultimately the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment.

The Abolitionists documents the heroic struggle of the men and women who carried out this first civil rights movement in the nation’s history.

– Carl H. Moneyhon, Ph.D.
UALR Department of History

Panelist Bios

John Coffin is an active board member and former chair of the Arkansas Coalition for Peace and Justice (ACPJ) and is a member of the Arkansas Chapter of Women’s Action for New Directions (WAND). John’s family genealogy provides him the privilege of counting strong abolitionists among his fore bearers. He and his wife are both active members of the Little Rock Quaker Meeting.

Bernadette Williams is an experienced National Park Ranger. She has supervised historical programs and tours from Colonial America to the Antebellum and Civil Rights era. Her knowledge base is rooted in the early civil rights movement in the North, particularly in Boston. She has studied Fredrick Douglass, Prince Hall, Henry David Thoreau, Harriett Tubman and Lewis Hayden. Her research focuses on the relevancy of these ancestral stories and how their ideals relate to contemporary figures such as Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and President Obama.

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About CAHC

The Center for Arkansas History and Culture (CAHC) is a unique and reliable resource that explores and promotes Arkansas’s rich history through identifying, collecting, and preserving records that are of enduring value.